On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
The country isn't ungovernable, but it cannot be governed in the way our political class wish it could.
They would love it if they could just keep running things the way they have been for the past 30 years. They can't. We need institutional reform, and a frank conversation about what we can and cannot afford. Despite what might be claimed, I think voters would be perfectly willing to make trade offs if they felt that their leaders had conviction, and made an effort to sell things to them frankly rather than engage in snake oil sales tactics and obfuscation.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
It will have more chance of re election getting a bailout than with massive austerity
But what do you think a bailout would result in? The IMF aren't just going to hand over a £200bn loan to the UK for nothing in return. They will insist on Greek style austerity and massive cuts to the welfare state.
Which soon saw Syriza come back to power anyway and of course you missed out the tax rises they would impose too
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
A similar debate happened in the US within the Republican Party, with Never-Trump fiscal conservatives arguing that Trumpism should be resisted because it was economically illiterate.
The Never Trumpers lost & I think the outcome will be the same in the UK.
The Conservative Party will be reduced to the same small minority as the Never-Trump Republicans, and Reform will be the majority "conservative" party.
Like Liz Truss I suspect Mr Farage will have to deal with the displeasure of the markets who will not want to fund this nonsense.
Bankers v coal miners argued by a populist rightwing party is exactly the type of contest Farage would relish
Farage is smart enough to know he can't take on Mr Market and win.
Trump has taken on the markets over tariffs and while he has lowered them he has kept his 10% tariffs on all imports with 25% for steel and more for China
So far. If Mr Market wants them lower, they will have to go lower.
In which case why bother with elections at all? Just let the stockmarket run the economy until the bankers are swinging from lamp posts come the revolution!
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
It will have more chance of re election getting a bailout than with massive austerity
Maybe you should more concern for the economic well being of the UK, rather than a narrow view on a party's re-election prospects because that is why we are in the mess we are now in
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
The ni was a short term fix before the social care was moved to a different tax that everyone including pensioners were due to pay.
Now granted it should have been a direct increase in income tax but politics was involved so it had to be something else
No, it was a different tax that like NI was only payable on earned incomes, including earned incomes from pensioners.
Unearned incomes, such as pensions, or income from lettings etc that are liable for ICT but not NIC were not going to be taxed by this new tax.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Labour's polling average is worse than Truss's and further below Sunaks Tories Conservative average is much worse than Truss's Neither are winning a majority
£35,000 is surely a very high threshold for WFA. It's quite OK for working age people earning much less to freeze, then, especially those with infants and young children.
Indeed. Especially given that three quarters of pensioners own their own home without a mortgage or rent.
But parents with infants who earn less than that, while working, and have to pay rent too, don't get that support?
Ridiculous.
Minimum wage is about double the state pension now for full time workers and of course those with children get child benefit pensioners don't get too.
Most on just state pension will be renting
Had a look at the stats on this. If you are on SRP and are renting, you are likely to receive Housing Benefit. Housing Element is for those of working age. So numbers for Nov 2023 are:
Private Rented and HB : 480,000 Social Rented and HB: 1,840,000 Total number of Pensioners: 12.95 mn
So 82% of pensioners are in their own home but not receiving HB i.e. paid off, mortgaged or rich renters. I'd suggest that Bart's figure of 75% in their own home is close to the mark.
You get housing benefit if you are renting and on minimum wage, which is double the state pension income now, plus child benefit if you have children which those on state pension won't get either
You are incorrect. HB is paid by the local authority to those who qualify for Pension Credit i.e. income too low. Those of working age get Universal Credit and Housing Element (same as HB but from a different pocket). There are some pensioners on UC/HE but they will be mixed age couples.
Might I direct your to the Child Poverty Action Group/Shelter/DWP pages on this.
So as I said those of working age still get housing support if renting
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
It will have more chance of re election getting a bailout than with massive austerity
Maybe you should how more concern for the economic well being of the UK, rather than a narrow view on a party's re-election prospects because that is why we are in the mess we are now in
HYUFD is usually almost exclusively electoral in his thinking, but with certain peculiarities - his oddly ideological obsession with the preservation and hypothecation of National Insurance being one.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
We wouldn't go to the IMF. The IMF lends a country foreign currency when foreigners won't fund its debt any more, usually to defend a fixed currency peg. But 99.5% of UK government debt is denominated in sterling (and about a third of the debt is owned by the government anyway). The chance of a fiscal crisis leading to a currency crisis is essentially non-existent.
The prospect of the IMF is a red herring. Far likelier is a bond market strike, leading to much higher interest rates, yet more enforced austerity and a recession. Or another scenario is government mandated "quantitative easing" i.e. money-printing, leading to higher inflation. But either way, the IMF won't be involved.
£35,000 is surely a very high threshold for WFA. It's quite OK for working age people earning much less to freeze, then, especially those with infants and young children.
Indeed. Especially given that three quarters of pensioners own their own home without a mortgage or rent.
But parents with infants who earn less than that, while working, and have to pay rent too, don't get that support?
Ridiculous.
Minimum wage is about double the state pension now for full time workers and of course those with children get child benefit pensioners don't get too.
Most on just state pension will be renting
Had a look at the stats on this. If you are on SRP and are renting, you are likely to receive Housing Benefit. Housing Element is for those of working age. So numbers for Nov 2023 are:
Private Rented and HB : 480,000 Social Rented and HB: 1,840,000 Total number of Pensioners: 12.95 mn
So 82% of pensioners are in their own home but not receiving HB i.e. paid off, mortgaged or rich renters. I'd suggest that Bart's figure of 75% in their own home is close to the mark.
You get housing benefit if you are renting and on minimum wage, which is double the state pension income now, plus child benefit if you have children which those on state pension won't get either
You are incorrect. HB is paid by the local authority to those who qualify for Pension Credit i.e. income too low. Those of working age get Universal Credit and Housing Element (same as HB but from a different pocket). There are some pensioners on UC/HE but they will be mixed age couples.
Might I direct your to the Child Poverty Action Group/Shelter/DWP pages on this.
So as I said those of working age still get housing support if renting
No you're wrong.
Plenty of working age people pay their rent entirely by themselves without support.
£35,000 is surely a very high threshold for WFA. It's quite OK for working age people earning much less to freeze, then, especially those with infants and young children.
Indeed. Especially given that three quarters of pensioners own their own home without a mortgage or rent.
But parents with infants who earn less than that, while working, and have to pay rent too, don't get that support?
Ridiculous.
Minimum wage is about double the state pension now for full time workers and of course those with children get child benefit pensioners don't get too.
Most on just state pension will be renting
Had a look at the stats on this. If you are on SRP and are renting, you are likely to receive Housing Benefit. Housing Element is for those of working age. So numbers for Nov 2023 are:
Private Rented and HB : 480,000 Social Rented and HB: 1,840,000 Total number of Pensioners: 12.95 mn
So 82% of pensioners are in their own home but not receiving HB i.e. paid off, mortgaged or rich renters. I'd suggest that Bart's figure of 75% in their own home is close to the mark.
You get housing benefit if you are renting and on minimum wage, which is double the state pension income now, plus child benefit if you have children which those on state pension won't get either
You are incorrect. HB is paid by the local authority to those who qualify for Pension Credit i.e. income too low. Those of working age get Universal Credit and Housing Element (same as HB but from a different pocket). There are some pensioners on UC/HE but they will be mixed age couples.
Might I direct your to the Child Poverty Action Group/Shelter/DWP pages on this.
So as I said those of working age still get housing support if renting
Legacy benefits claimants still get HB - i was getting HB from my council and ESA until my migration letter to UC last month
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
Please quote the additional figure required from NI to fund social care and extending it to peoples homes
Have you even a clue about the cost even ?
And you do know anyway NI is not a hypothecated tax
'The current system of National Insurance has its roots in the National Insurance Act 1911, which introduced the concept of benefits based on contributions paid by employed people and their employer.'
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
Please quote the additional figure required from NI to fund social care and extending it to peoples homes
Have you even a clue about the cost even ?
And you do know anyway NI is not a hypothecated tax
'The current system of National Insurance has its roots in the National Insurance Act 1911, which introduced the concept of benefits based on contributions paid by employed people and their employer.'
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
Please quote the additional figure required from NI to fund social care and extending it to peoples homes
Have you even a clue about the cost even ?
And you do know anyway NI is not a hypothecated tax
'The current system of National Insurance has its roots in the National Insurance Act 1911, which introduced the concept of benefits based on contributions paid by employed people and their employer.'
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
IMF says hello
IMF doesn't have to win elections.
Otherwise you end up with an Italian style technocrat government for a while imposing austerity and tax rises which is ultimately still replaced by an elected populist cake for all party anyway
Cake for all only works if there's someone funding the cake. Italy have made huge cuts to the state and a series of pro-growth measures to get market confidence back. Argentina is a more likely destination for the UK if the people continually vote themselves more spending, it's taken them 80 years, a few dictators and now a libertarian chainsaw wielding president to get back to some kind of credibility.
An external default event for the UK will be truly shocking and result in hundreds of billions being cut from state expenditure on welfare within months and windfall taxes on generous pension schemes as the government is forced to balance the books in order to rollover existing debt and sell new debt. We may even be forced to sell debt in dollars if confidence in Sterling is low.
Meloni is making big increases in child benefit etc.
Milei is only in his first term and already his approval rating has slumped
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
Please quote the additional figure required from NI to fund social care and extending it to peoples homes
Have you even a clue about the cost even ?
And you do know anyway NI is not a hypothecated tax
'The current system of National Insurance has its roots in the National Insurance Act 1911, which introduced the concept of benefits based on contributions paid by employed people and their employer.'
£35,000 is surely a very high threshold for WFA. It's quite OK for working age people earning much less to freeze, then, especially those with infants and young children.
Indeed. Especially given that three quarters of pensioners own their own home without a mortgage or rent.
But parents with infants who earn less than that, while working, and have to pay rent too, don't get that support?
Ridiculous.
Minimum wage is about double the state pension now for full time workers and of course those with children get child benefit pensioners don't get too.
Most on just state pension will be renting
Had a look at the stats on this. If you are on SRP and are renting, you are likely to receive Housing Benefit. Housing Element is for those of working age. So numbers for Nov 2023 are:
Private Rented and HB : 480,000 Social Rented and HB: 1,840,000 Total number of Pensioners: 12.95 mn
So 82% of pensioners are in their own home but not receiving HB i.e. paid off, mortgaged or rich renters. I'd suggest that Bart's figure of 75% in their own home is close to the mark.
You get housing benefit if you are renting and on minimum wage, which is double the state pension income now, plus child benefit if you have children which those on state pension won't get either
You are incorrect. HB is paid by the local authority to those who qualify for Pension Credit i.e. income too low. Those of working age get Universal Credit and Housing Element (same as HB but from a different pocket). There are some pensioners on UC/HE but they will be mixed age couples.
Might I direct your to the Child Poverty Action Group/Shelter/DWP pages on this.
So as I said those of working age still get housing support if renting
No you're wrong.
Plenty of working age people pay their rent entirely by themselves without support.
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
The illiteracy was Hezza shutting down profitable pits and then a whole generation of not caring if we make steel or not. When did industry become the holdout for the hard left btw - the capitalist right used to think it was a good idea as it made them rich.
Farage is asking the "what if" questions which millions have been asking for years and years. Sure, it's probably not doable. But he's talking about what we have lost thanks to cross-party vandalism and what we could have again if we took a strategic approach to where we are now and where we want to get to.
Do we want to make steel in the UK yes or no? If yes don't we have 400 years of coal sat underneath Wales waiting to be dug up to power the furnaces?
The pits weren't profitable. Which is why no-one could make them work - sadly, some miner invested their redundancy money in such schemes.
The perception was of a government maliciously targeting people they saw as hostile to their values.
I thought of Mrs Thatcher the other day when some PBers of a 'robust' right wing persuasion were complaining that this Labour government were doing things like VAT on private schools and IHT for farmers out of a desire to punish tory voters.
Ok, so making their school fees a bit more expensive or taking some tax when a chunk of land is passed on is not quite the same as complete loss of livelihood and dignity, but it's the same charge effectively.
Many family farms will be lost because of the family farms tax and of course more mines closed under Wilson than Thatcher
I actually don't agree with the charge either way. I think SKS is driven by what he thinks best for the country (whether I agree with it or not) and I accept the same was true of Mrs T. Ditto most PMs. About the only one I'd exempt from this assumption is Boris Johnson. I don't think he gave a shit.
No Starmer and Reeves were driven by class war pure and simple as most farmers don't vote Labour.
Mrs Thatcher fought the unions yes but as I said more mines closed under Wilson than her
Well if you're going to claim that I'm going to claim Thatcher was too then.
And I'll raise you. Thatcher's main reason for selling off council houses and all of her privatisations were partisan political. She trashed our housing system and flogged off our strategic industries just to try and create a cohort of tory voters.
What do you say to that?
Yes and she greatly expanded working class home ownership as a result and made nationalised industries much more efficient
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
We wouldn't go to the IMF. The IMF lends a country foreign currency when foreigners won't fund its debt any more, usually to defend a fixed currency peg. But 99.5% of UK government debt is denominated in sterling (and about a third of the debt is owned by the government anyway). The chance of a fiscal crisis leading to a currency crisis is essentially non-existent.
The prospect of the IMF is a red herring. Far likelier is a bond market strike, leading to much higher interest rates, yet more enforced austerity and a recession. Or another scenario is government mandated "quantitative easing" i.e. money-printing, leading to higher inflation. But either way, the IMF won't be involved.
It depends, we may need foreign currency debt to import stuff given how poor our balance of payments is if the government precipitates a debt or currency crisis. Alastair Meeks talked a lot about the road to Argentina and right now we're absolutely on it, we're a middle income country that's getting poorer acting like a rich country. It is going to end badly.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
You can't ringfence healthcare or social care or other universal benefits you want funding by the tax called national insurance either.
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
Max Boyce's best Welsh rugby joke was after they lost to Papua New Guinea in the WC. 'I was so depressed I called the Samaritans in Cardiff- they were closed!'
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
What a bizarre analogy, but if he were to be Obi Wan Kenobi then seeing him struck down would serve the country well.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
Please quote the additional figure required from NI to fund social care and extending it to peoples homes
Have you even a clue about the cost even ?
And you do know anyway NI is not a hypothecated tax
'The current system of National Insurance has its roots in the National Insurance Act 1911, which introduced the concept of benefits based on contributions paid by employed people and their employer.'
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
The ni was a short term fix before the social care was moved to a different tax that everyone including pensioners were due to pay.
Now granted it should have been a direct increase in income tax but politics was involved so it had to be something else
No, it was a different tax that like NI was only payable on earned incomes, including earned incomes from pensioners.
Unearned incomes, such as pensions, or income from lettings etc that are liable for ICT but not NIC were not going to be taxed by this new tax.
Could you please do some research before replying to a comment from me - my memory when it comes to obscure tax when it comes to pay is very good for “reasons” connected to something I’ve been working on for years
Edit - I don’t usually call someone out but this is the second time you’ve posted comments saying something I’ve posted isn’t right and I’ve gone back to the source to discover I’m right and your memory was mistaken
The sad truth Reeves has got nothing much right. Her reset budget got tangled up with a relatively trivial shortfall of unfunded promises and did not come close to addressing the real issues.
One exception was getting rid of the nonsensical WFP. Well done her. A small and stumbling step in the right direction but welcome for all that. And now she is being bullied into reversing that. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
You can't ringfence healthcare or social care or other universal benefits you want funding by the tax called national insurance either.
Yes you can, most OECD nations fund healthcare via social insurance or in the US private healthcare not tax.
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
He's more like that Stormtrooper who hits his head running through the door in A new hope
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
I wonder how you'd have reacted had some pb Tory suggested that approach when Rishi was PM?
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
You know those weird tapers at £50,000 (now£60,000) and £100,000. Well pensioners now have their own at £35,000
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
The ni was a short term fix before the social care was moved to a different tax that everyone including pensioners were due to pay.
Now granted it should have been a direct increase in income tax but politics was involved so it had to be something else
No, it was a different tax that like NI was only payable on earned incomes, including earned incomes from pensioners.
Unearned incomes, such as pensions, or income from lettings etc that are liable for ICT but not NIC were not going to be taxed by this new tax.
Could you please do some research before replying to a comment from me - my memory when it comes to obscure tax when it comes to pay is very good for “reasons” connected to something I’ve been working on for years
Sorry, but how does that contradict a single bit of what I said?
It would be levied like NICs, but without the age limitation, only on earned incomes liable to NICs.
Incomes exempt from NICs, like incomes from letting out properties, or pensions (not working while pension age) that attract ICT but not NIC would continue to be exempt from that levy.
Your link doesn't contradict anything I said. In fact it reaffirms what I said.
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
It was good night Vienna but it will be worth the money to see Farage fail to restart then
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
Even Boris backed reopening a Cumbria coal mine, if Farage wants the South Wales white working class vote promising to reopen coal mines and sod upper middle class progressive net zero focused Londoners was the way to do it
The only reason people are talking about opening coal mines is that the collective memory of how crap working in them was has disappeared.
So you have a rose tinted viewpoint from people who can’t remember what it was really like as those who worked down them have mainly died out from lung conditions
Coal mining is exempt from sex equality legislation. You are allowed to only employ male miners.
No, you are not allowed to employ only male miners. The Coal Authority (now the Mining Remediation Authority) is exempt from the requirement to publish gender pay gap information, but there is no other exemption related to mining in the Equality Act. There used to be a specific prohibition on women working below ground in coal mines, but that has long since gone.
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
Given the amount of hot air Farage emits, it's a surprise that he thinks we need the coal as well.
(Really, it's part of nostalgia for half-remembered good times, isn't it? And it's not going to bring his hair back from grey, anyway.)
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
You know those weird tapers at £50,000 (now£60,000) and £100,000. Well pensioners now have their own at £35,000
We need to just delete the entire tax code and start again.
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
I wonder how you'd have reacted had some pb Tory suggested that approach when Rishi was PM?
Tbf I was not prone to attacking Rishi because he was clearly doing his best in difficult circumstances and the Cons were clearly on their way out. Within that context I kind of was rooting for him.
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Pensioners with incomes over £35k still don't get WFA even after today's u turn
Is the winter fuel payment automatic (a side-effect of tax returns) or do people have to claim it? The latter would significantly impact numbers, I suspect.
You know those weird tapers at £50,000 (now£60,000) and £100,000. Well pensioners now have their own at £35,000
We need to just delete the entire tax code and start again.
We need a tax code written by Estonians, not Etonians.
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Social care already is means tested, isn't it?
As for the rest, healthcare for working people is pretty cheap, because most don't really need any. The people whose healthcare is expensive tend to be out-of-work or very old. And means testing just means that normal people don't have an incentive to save. That was the logic of the 2010 pension reforms in the first place.
Sorry, but we've got habituated to taxes being unsustainability low. And I've voted for those governments, as have you, as have most of us.
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
Given the amount of hot air Farage emits, it's a surprise that he thinks we need the coal as well.
(Really, it's part of nostalgia for half-remembered good times, isn't it? And it's not going to bring his hair back from grey, anyway.)
The closure is still raw in Port Talbot. I do believe that the blast furnaces should have been kept running but the last Government and this Government were keen to move to electric arc furnaces. This of course was all before Trump.
Perhaps the worst part of Farage cynicism is enough voters will buy into both the reopening of deep mines and blast furnaces. Neither are practical options.
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Pensioners with incomes over £35k still don't get WFA even after today's u turn
Err I know, but £35,000 is riduculously high
It should have been left as it was but Reeves is simply pathetic as chancellor
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
A similar debate happened in the US within the Republican Party, with Never-Trump fiscal conservatives arguing that Trumpism should be resisted because it was economically illiterate.
The Never Trumpers lost & I think the outcome will be the same in the UK.
The Conservative Party will be reduced to the same small minority as the Never-Trump Republicans, and Reform will be the majority "conservative" party.
Like Liz Truss I suspect Mr Farage will have to deal with the displeasure of the markets who will not want to fund this nonsense.
Bankers v coal miners argued by a populist rightwing party is exactly the type of contest Farage would relish
Farage is smart enough to know he can't take on Mr Market and win.
Trump has taken on the markets over tariffs and while he has lowered them he has kept his 10% tariffs on all imports with 25% for steel and more for China
So far. If Mr Market wants them lower, they will have to go lower.
In which case why bother with elections at all? Just let the stockmarket run the economy until the bankers are swinging from lamp posts come the revolution!
Or, and it’s a radical idea I will admit, we could live within our means and do what the hell we want. Mr Market only has power when we don’t.
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Social care already is means tested, isn't it?
As for the rest, healthcare for working people is pretty cheap, because most don't really need any. The people whose healthcare is expensive tend to be out-of-work or very old. And means testing just means that normal people don't have an incentive to save. That was the logic of the 2010 pension reforms in the first place.
Sorry, but we've got habituated to taxes being unsustainability low. And I've voted for those governments, as have you, as have most of us.
Everyone uses the NHS and high earners and the wealthy should pay their own way
Taxes for working people and businesses are far too high
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
What a bizarre analogy, but if he were to be Obi Wan Kenobi then seeing him struck down would serve the country well.
Well I was inspired by your Gaza = WW2.
But the point such as it is is, we need Starmer to deliver enough to satisfy this increasingly skittish electorate otherwise we get the unspeakable horrors of a Reform government.
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
America at least a few steps down the path to civil war...
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
You can't ringfence healthcare or social care or other universal benefits you want funding by the tax called national insurance either.
Yes you can, most OECD nations fund healthcare via social insurance or in the US private healthcare not tax.
Japan etc fund social care via insurance
If you want to fund social care, or healthcare, via insurance then all the more reason to abolish NI and get people to pay for actual insurance.
Instead NI is a tax and the NHS/care is universally available regardless of whether you've ever paid NI or not.
A brilliant writer. A superb journalist. A right wing lunatic. But nobody is perfect.
Went to my old school too, one of the greatest thriller writers ever to have lived
'He wrote in the newspaper six years ago, when he was aged 80: “So, unless I go completely crazy, which I don’t intend to do, the rest of my days should be comfortable.
“As for the future, I may survive the next decade but I’ve no lust to be 90. I don’t know what I’d do, beyond what I’m doing nowadays, which is getting up in the morning, reading the Telegraph and the Mail and having all my prejudices reconfirmed, brewing up a cup of char and then going down the pub for lunch.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/09/frederick-forsyth-dies-age-86/
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
Given the amount of hot air Farage emits, it's a surprise that he thinks we need the coal as well.
(Really, it's part of nostalgia for half-remembered good times, isn't it? And it's not going to bring his hair back from grey, anyway.)
The closure is still raw in Port Talbot. I do believe that the blast furnaces should have been kept running but the last Government and this Government were keen to move to electric arc furnaces. This of course was all before Trump.
Perhaps the worst part of Farage cynicism is enough voters will buy into both the reopening of deep mines and blast furnaces. Neither are practical options.
Farage is either ill informed or a liar.
I note we are having quite a day agreeing with each other
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
America at least a few steps down the path to civil war...
People need to remember Little Rock and indeed the pressure put on southern governors by the Kennedys. History says Federalised National Guards obey the Federal Government. As indeed they should.
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
He's a querulous and treacherous clown, so, no
Well nothing will stop you from self-indulgent nihilistic whinging. This I have come to realise.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
You can't ringfence healthcare or social care or other universal benefits you want funding by the tax called national insurance either.
Yes you can, most OECD nations fund healthcare via social insurance or in the US private healthcare not tax.
Japan etc fund social care via insurance
If you want to fund social care, or healthcare, via insurance then all the more reason to abolish NI and get people to pay for actual insurance.
Instead NI is a tax and the NHS/care is universally available regardless of whether you've ever paid NI or not.
Then you end up with the US problem where mainly private health insurance funded healthcare works for the rich but leaves many middle income and lower income earners unable to afford healthcare if they cannot qualify for Medicaid and are too young for Medicare.
Which is why most OECD nations fund it via government run national health insurance programmes
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
Given the amount of hot air Farage emits, it's a surprise that he thinks we need the coal as well.
(Really, it's part of nostalgia for half-remembered good times, isn't it? And it's not going to bring his hair back from grey, anyway.)
The closure is still raw in Port Talbot. I do believe that the blast furnaces should have been kept running but the last Government and this Government were keen to move to electric arc furnaces. This of course was all before Trump.
Perhaps the worst part of Farage cynicism is enough voters will buy into both the reopening of deep mines and blast furnaces. Neither are practical options.
Farage is either ill informed or a liar.
I note we are having quite a day agreeing with each other
Politics hey
Quite how a small collection of similarly positioned people has managed to have an argument over 30 years is one of the great unanswered questions of PB.
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
A similar debate happened in the US within the Republican Party, with Never-Trump fiscal conservatives arguing that Trumpism should be resisted because it was economically illiterate.
The Never Trumpers lost & I think the outcome will be the same in the UK.
The Conservative Party will be reduced to the same small minority as the Never-Trump Republicans, and Reform will be the majority "conservative" party.
Like Liz Truss I suspect Mr Farage will have to deal with the displeasure of the markets who will not want to fund this nonsense.
Bankers v coal miners argued by a populist rightwing party is exactly the type of contest Farage would relish
Farage is smart enough to know he can't take on Mr Market and win.
Trump has taken on the markets over tariffs and while he has lowered them he has kept his 10% tariffs on all imports with 25% for steel and more for China
So far. If Mr Market wants them lower, they will have to go lower.
In which case why bother with elections at all? Just let the stockmarket run the economy until the bankers are swinging from lamp posts come the revolution!
Or, and it’s a radical idea I will admit, we could live within our means and do what the hell we want. Mr Market only has power when we don’t.
We could but most voters want more spending on the services they use and lower taxes for them, even if higher taxes for the rich and lower spending on immigrants and welfare services they don't use
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
America at least a few steps down the path to civil war...
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Pensioners with incomes over £35k still don't get WFA even after today's u turn
Err I know, but £35,000 is riduculously high
It should have been left as it was but Reeves is simply pathetic as chancellor
If Labour's poll rating hadn't collapsed it would have been
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Pensioners with incomes over £35k still don't get WFA even after today's u turn
Err I know, but £35,000 is riduculously high
It should have been left as it was but Reeves is simply pathetic as chancellor
If Labour's poll rating hadn't collapsed it would have been
Well, that says it all about our politics and why we are in this chaotic mess
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
A similar debate happened in the US within the Republican Party, with Never-Trump fiscal conservatives arguing that Trumpism should be resisted because it was economically illiterate.
The Never Trumpers lost & I think the outcome will be the same in the UK.
The Conservative Party will be reduced to the same small minority as the Never-Trump Republicans, and Reform will be the majority "conservative" party.
Like Liz Truss I suspect Mr Farage will have to deal with the displeasure of the markets who will not want to fund this nonsense.
Bankers v coal miners argued by a populist rightwing party is exactly the type of contest Farage would relish
Farage is smart enough to know he can't take on Mr Market and win.
Trump has taken on the markets over tariffs and while he has lowered them he has kept his 10% tariffs on all imports with 25% for steel and more for China
So far. If Mr Market wants them lower, they will have to go lower.
In which case why bother with elections at all? Just let the stockmarket run the economy until the bankers are swinging from lamp posts come the revolution!
Or, and it’s a radical idea I will admit, we could live within our means and do what the hell we want. Mr Market only has power when we don’t.
We could but most voters want more spending on the services they use and lower taxes for them, even if higher taxes for the rich and lower spending on immigrants and welfare services they don't use
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
You can't ringfence healthcare or social care or other universal benefits you want funding by the tax called national insurance either.
Yes you can, most OECD nations fund healthcare via social insurance or in the US private healthcare not tax.
Japan etc fund social care via insurance
If you want to fund social care, or healthcare, via insurance then all the more reason to abolish NI and get people to pay for actual insurance.
Instead NI is a tax and the NHS/care is universally available regardless of whether you've ever paid NI or not.
Then you end up with the US problem where mainly private health insurance funded healthcare works for the rich but leaves many middle income and lower income earners unable to afford healthcare if they cannot qualify for Medicaid and are too young for Medicare.
Which is why most OECD nations fund it via government run national health insurance programmes
Indeed, that is the problem with funding it by actual insurance, instead of a tax like we have.
NI is not health insurance, if it were the NHS would be ringfenced only to those who pay for it. Its a tax, no more, no less.
A brilliant writer. A superb journalist. A right wing lunatic. But nobody is perfect.
Went to my old school too, one of the greatest thriller writers ever to have lived
'He wrote in the newspaper six years ago, when he was aged 80: “So, unless I go completely crazy, which I don’t intend to do, the rest of my days should be comfortable.
“As for the future, I may survive the next decade but I’ve no lust to be 90. I don’t know what I’d do, beyond what I’m doing nowadays, which is getting up in the morning, reading the Telegraph and the Mail and having all my prejudices reconfirmed, brewing up a cup of char and then going down the pub for lunch.” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/09/frederick-forsyth-dies-age-86/
Underground coal gasification allows the coal to be recovered without the need to mine it. You can reach out to the coal that is miles out from the Durham Coast under the North Sea.
Get the syngas to the surface, water gas shift, Rectisol to remove the H2S (which is then sent to a Claus plant) and CO2, compress the CO2 for sequestration and use the hydrogen product for power generation, heating or as chemical feedstock. Brilliant, eh?
However, as with fracking and new offshore exploration licences, UCG has been blocked in the UK.
What does this country have against indigenous energy resources?
There is one main reason. Those making the decisions are at it.
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
Of course it's governable ! For all our problems we're not somewhere like South Sudan..
Yeah alright, that was a bit melodramatic. I mean, perhaps it's not currently possible to present a coherent plan to the electorate that can both: get you re-elected; and pull us out of this economic hole we find ourselves in.
That is what I understood you to mean. And it is worth considering as a point. Are the electorate and whoever they elect locked in a doom loop?
Yes
Perhaps SKS is like Obe Wan Kanobe. Our last and only chance.
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
He's a querulous and treacherous clown, so, no
... a liar, a humbug, a hypocrite, a vagabond, a loathsome spotted reptile and a self-confessed chicken strangler ...
What today has shown is we have a weak Chancellor who talks tough on fiscal probiety, and then buckles at the least sign of resistance and unpopularity
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
Pensioners with incomes over £35k still don't get WFA even after today's u turn
Err I know, but £35,000 is riduculously high
It should have been left as it was but Reeves is simply pathetic as chancellor
If Labour's poll rating hadn't collapsed it would have been
And that's the problem.
Politically, this is democracy working as it should. Government does something, gets hideous negative feedback, reverses it.
That feedback may be stupid or ill-informed. In this case, I happen to think it is. (Though there is something a bit pathetic about people who condemned the cut and the reinstatement. Though mostly they are never going to be put down as a maybe on the canvassing list.) But the electorate is always right, even when they are wrong.
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
A brilliant writer. A superb journalist. A right wing lunatic. But nobody is perfect.
Went to my old school too, one of the greatest thriller writers ever to have lived
The day of the Jackal was by far the most famous because the original film was borderline perfect but I actually preferred the Odessa file. His novels , when he was writing about the underbelly of Europe, which he knew so well, were simply outstanding. The further he got from that the weaker they got.
I was listening to a podcast about brands and how they got where they are today and got to this one below about how Trump saved Pizza Hut/ Pizza Hut saved Trump.
Short story is they hired him and Ivana for an advert for the failing stuffed crust pizza after they had launched it ineffectively and paid him $1m (back in the 80s) when his businesses were a mess.
The popularity of the advert launched him into major celebrity and so on.
Whilst it’s a really interesting story it’s telling how the people who made the ad were amazed how good an actor he is, got everything immediately, whip smart. It did make it clear people should never underestimate him.
The podcast was from before the second coming so would love an update on the ad people’s views of him now.
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
Ooh, Farage on ITV News. He says he's going to reopen the blast furnaces at Port Talbot.
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
Given the amount of hot air Farage emits, it's a surprise that he thinks we need the coal as well.
(Really, it's part of nostalgia for half-remembered good times, isn't it? And it's not going to bring his hair back from grey, anyway.)
The closure is still raw in Port Talbot. I do believe that the blast furnaces should have been kept running but the last Government and this Government were keen to move to electric arc furnaces. This of course was all before Trump.
Perhaps the worst part of Farage cynicism is enough voters will buy into both the reopening of deep mines and blast furnaces. Neither are practical options.
Farage is either ill informed or a liar.
I note we are having quite a day agreeing with each other
Politics hey
It makes the subsequent disagreements more meaningful - a good thing.
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
We wouldn't go to the IMF. The IMF lends a country foreign currency when foreigners won't fund its debt any more, usually to defend a fixed currency peg. But 99.5% of UK government debt is denominated in sterling (and about a third of the debt is owned by the government anyway). The chance of a fiscal crisis leading to a currency crisis is essentially non-existent.
The prospect of the IMF is a red herring. Far likelier is a bond market strike, leading to much higher interest rates, yet more enforced austerity and a recession. Or another scenario is government mandated "quantitative easing" i.e. money-printing, leading to higher inflation. But either way, the IMF won't be involved.
Yeah I agree. Pandora is out of her box and flashing her knickers. Weimar Republic is a much more likely scenario than the IMF. Print baby print.
No real Tory could ever countenance supporting such economic illiteracy.
The illiteracy was Hezza shutting down profitable pits and then a whole generation of not caring if we make steel or not. When did industry become the holdout for the hard left btw - the capitalist right used to think it was a good idea as it made them rich.
Farage is asking the "what if" questions which millions have been asking for years and years. Sure, it's probably not doable. But he's talking about what we have lost thanks to cross-party vandalism and what we could have again if we took a strategic approach to where we are now and where we want to get to.
Do we want to make steel in the UK yes or no? If yes don't we have 400 years of coal sat underneath Wales waiting to be dug up to power the furnaces?
The pits weren't profitable. Which is why no-one could make them work - sadly, some miner invested their redundancy money in such schemes.
The perception was of a government maliciously targeting people they saw as hostile to their values.
I thought of Mrs Thatcher the other day when some PBers of a 'robust' right wing persuasion were complaining that this Labour government were doing things like VAT on private schools and IHT for farmers out of a desire to punish tory voters.
Ok, so making their school fees a bit more expensive or taking some tax when a chunk of land is passed on is not quite the same as complete loss of livelihood and dignity, but it's the same charge effectively.
The facts were that coal was getting more and more expensive to mine in the U.K. it had been doing so for generations.
At the same time world coal prices were collapsing (due to vast, open cast pits) and gas was coming on line.
Scargill literally wanted an eternal subsidy to support mining no matter what. Thatcher saying no to that was about the fourth no from various governments.
Scargill did not want that. He wanted to bring down the government.
Those were his stated, official terms. Yes, he wanted to bring down the government. Then get those terms from the following government.
Max Boyce's best Welsh rugby joke was after they lost to Papua New Guinea in the WC. 'I was so depressed I called the Samaritans in Cardiff- they were closed!'
My favourite welsh rugby joke may well originate from Max Boyce. Two old boys, great rugby players in their youth, make a pact. Whoever dies first promises to come back and tell the other about heaven. So when the first dies, the other waits expectantly. And sure enough his friend comes back in ghostly form. His friend asks ‘Tell, me - is there rugby in heaven?’ The ghost say ‘There’s good and bad news. The rugby is glorious, you are young again and can play forever. All the greats are there too.’ That sounds amazing! What could possibly be the bad news?’ His ghostly friend pauses and then says ‘You’re playing outside centre next Saturday…’
On topic, I was surprised how toxic the original WFA cut proved to be - it's a relatively small hit to pensioners' incomes, especially given how much the state pension has risen over the last two years, and the poorest were protected. Personally, I'd have ridden it out. However, electorally toxic it was, and the U-turn, although politically embarrassing, is politically astute. The backlash should be fairly short-lived, and I don't think it will now be an issue at the next GE.
I think its disastrous.
This was a sensible reform they did, one I repeatedly defended.
Now they've gone back on it, its the worst of all worlds.
They've taken the hit on the reform, yet not kept the economic advantages - and worse, politically, they've shown themselves to be spineless and willing to cave to any pressure even if they're doing the right thing.
Expect the moaning from anyone hit by any comparable reform now to be turned up to 11 as they've shown that's what gets results.
Utterly pathetic and no way to run a country. And weak, weak, weak from a government just elected by a landslide to u-turn on their first "difficult decision".
It's a view, and as I said I supported the cut. But they've done other unpopular things that have been castigated by many or most - private school fees, farmers' IHT, employers' NI, net zero, to name a few - and they haven't backtracked on those despite pressure to do so. I can live with one U-turn.
I don't support the U-turn, I would like them to have kept it. But as you said upthread it is remarkable how toxic it was for them - I've heard plenty of reports that it was the number one issue on the doorstep in the local elections.
I suspect this is in large part a political mess that they couldn't have escaped - a relatively hostile commentariat would have found something else (you've listed several possible things) to castigate them with were it not WFP.
I suspect Labour hoped that, with time, it would have been seen as a relatively sensible cut that signaled a small step towards sound fiscal management. But this narrative clearly hasn't happened, and probably wouldn't have happened - instead it would have remained an albatross around their necks.
I can see the politics that says, after the locals, we can't afford to keep the WFP cut. But I don't like it. Perhaps the UK is simply ungovernable at the moment?
The country isn't ungovernable, but it cannot be governed in the way our political class wish it could.
They would love it if they could just keep running things the way they have been for the past 30 years. They can't. We need institutional reform, and a frank conversation about what we can and cannot afford. Despite what might be claimed, I think voters would be perfectly willing to make trade offs if they felt that their leaders had conviction, and made an effort to sell things to them frankly rather than engage in snake oil sales tactics and obfuscation.
Sorry, slow reply. Do you think that is true even when the 'frank conversation ' is filtered through the commentariat and social media?
I want to believe you are right, but I just can't see the space for that frank conversation at present.
Serious development with Rachel Reeves this evening. Rachel Reeves has gone from a fringe to bangs.
Let’s deal with the facts - “A fringe is often more defined and makes a bold statement, while bangs offer a softer, more versatile look that can be adapted to suit.”
Serious development with Rachel Reeves this evening. Rachel Reeves has gone from a fringe to bangs.
Let’s deal with the facts - “A fringe is often more defined and makes a bold statement, while bangs offer a softer, more versatile look that can be adapted to suit.”
An appalling man, indeed, but I'm not sure one can label him as you have
1. Wrote a number 1 bestselling book 2. Has used three names and written bestsellers in each name 3. Most famous book sold probably 2 million copies 4. Translated into at least 30 languages (and been a bestseller in multiple countries, number 1 in Holland etc) 5. Got a $200,000 advance for a porn novel he wrote in a month
As for his journalism, I believe he is one of the two most-read authors on the oldest, most prestigious magazine in the world, and is also an award winning travel writer, now in his 4th decade of travel writing; and travel writing is the most desired form of journalism, which almost every journalist would love to do. So only the very best get to do it
If that is "mediocre" and "moderate" then you set a high bar, but then you're a failed painter, so perhaps some bitterness has crept in
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
She's worse than Liz Truss.
Liz Truss was incompetent but also unfortunate/foolish to coincide her rather trivial reforms with the Bank announcing QT, and her own announcement of the blank cheque on energy bill support.
Had they not announced the tax reforms (besides the pre-announced abolition of the dodgy NI supplement, which Hunt rightly kept abolished) but still had the QT and energy support, then the likelihood is that the markets would still have reacted, but the media would have comprehended the energy/QT effect without any scapegoats.
At least Truss had some sensible ideas like abolishing that hateful NI supplement that Sunak had created. What has Reeves ever done that's positive? Besides what she's now u-turned on.
That NI supplement was the best way to fund social care longer term
Far from it.
Why should only salaried incomes be paying for social care?
Income tax would be a better way to pay for it, 'all in it together'.
Or if you want payments for social care to protect people's inheritances, then do that from inheritance tax.
No reason to only tax people working for a living.
Income tax is a tax, as is inheritance tax (and people already have to sell their homes to pay for residential care).
NI should fund social care and be ringfenced for that though you could extend NI for social care to those retired but not yet in care homes
NI is a tax like any other, it is not hypothecated and hasn't been for almost 30 years.
Indeed, and it was always a tax even when it was hypothecated.
Nope, it was set up as an insurance to fund the state pension and contributory unemployment benefits and some healthcare only and should always have been ringfenced just for that
Nope, it was set up as a tax and called insurance.
It was always a tax, the name is irrelevant.
Using your logic we could merge NI and Income Tax as I advocate, keep the criterion for eligibility of the tax as Income Tax is set by today (so all income is covered equally not just wages), but call the revised tax "National Insurance" . . . then claim tax has been abolished.
No as you can't ringfence the army, the police, schools, transport funding etc.
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
You can't ringfence healthcare or social care or other universal benefits you want funding by the tax called national insurance either.
Yes you can, most OECD nations fund healthcare via social insurance or in the US private healthcare not tax.
Japan etc fund social care via insurance
If you want to fund social care, or healthcare, via insurance then all the more reason to abolish NI and get people to pay for actual insurance.
Instead NI is a tax and the NHS/care is universally available regardless of whether you've ever paid NI or not.
Then you end up with the US problem where mainly private health insurance funded healthcare works for the rich but leaves many middle income and lower income earners unable to afford healthcare if they cannot qualify for Medicaid and are too young for Medicare.
Which is why most OECD nations fund it via government run national health insurance programmes
Indeed, that is the problem with funding it by actual insurance, instead of a tax like we have.
NI is not health insurance, if it were the NHS would be ringfenced only to those who pay for it. Its a tax, no more, no less.
The opposite, funding healthcare just by tax leads to the massive bureaucratic state entity that is our NHS.
As I said state healthcare should be ringfenced so only those who pay into it via national health insurance get it like most OECD nations do with tax only topping it up for the poorest who could not otherwise afford healthcare
Time to sack Reeves. She's dangerously incompetent.
Hey Labour have only wasted the most important year of this Government - the one where the grotty things you have to do are 95% forgotten by the time the next election comes round
This spending review is going to send interest rates shooting up and mortgage rates will follow. She's Liz Truss in slow motion. The country can't afford to borrow more and it can't afford higher tax rates. Spending has got to fall and it has to fall on the unproductive bits like pensions and welfare.
No Labour government will get re elected slashing pensions and welfare, even Reform are promising to protect both with a bit of DOGE from the latter locally.
The Tories might have got away with it if they were still strong with the private sector average earners but they aren't.
If the Tories remain in 3rd place and the LDs in 4th then cake for all from Labour and Reform (with a few tax rises for Tory voters from the former) will be the way forward for the next decade if not beyond
A Labour government won't get reelected if they have to go begging to the IMF for a bailout to avoid an external default either. The rate at which RR is increasing the debt is already testing market patience and inflation is going up, not down. A spending review which adds yet more debt may precipitate a debt crisis and result in big upwards swings in debt yields forcing either swingeing cuts forced by the market or swingeing cuts forced by the IMF.
We wouldn't go to the IMF. The IMF lends a country foreign currency when foreigners won't fund its debt any more, usually to defend a fixed currency peg. But 99.5% of UK government debt is denominated in sterling (and about a third of the debt is owned by the government anyway). The chance of a fiscal crisis leading to a currency crisis is essentially non-existent.
The prospect of the IMF is a red herring. Far likelier is a bond market strike, leading to much higher interest rates, yet more enforced austerity and a recession. Or another scenario is government mandated "quantitative easing" i.e. money-printing, leading to higher inflation. But either way, the IMF won't be involved.
Yeah I agree. Pandora is out of her box and flashing her knickers. Weimar Republic is a much more likely scenario than the IMF. Print baby print.
But that leads to an IMF bailout as well because external creditors will insist on being paid in dollars and our FX reserves are basically nil.
Comments
They would love it if they could just keep running things the way they have been for the past 30 years. They can't. We need institutional reform, and a frank conversation about what we can and cannot afford. Despite what might be claimed, I think voters would be perfectly willing to make trade offs if they felt that their leaders had conviction, and made an effort to sell things to them frankly rather than engage in snake oil sales tactics and obfuscation.
Unearned incomes, such as pensions, or income from lettings etc that are liable for ICT but not NIC were not going to be taxed by this new tax.
Conservative average is much worse than Truss's
Neither are winning a majority
The prospect of the IMF is a red herring. Far likelier is a bond market strike, leading to much higher interest rates, yet more enforced austerity and a recession. Or another scenario is government mandated "quantitative easing" i.e. money-printing, leading to higher inflation. But either way, the IMF won't be involved.
Plenty of working age people pay their rent entirely by themselves without support.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Insurance
You do realise income tax was originally set up to fund the army in the Napoleonic Wars?
Milei is only in his first term and already his approval rating has slumped
https://buenosairesherald.com/politics/mileis-popularity-slumps-amid-bahia-blanca-tragedy-and-imf-negotiations
So let's be rooting for him instead of all this self-indulgent nihilistic whinging.
'I was so depressed I called the Samaritans in Cardiff- they were closed!'
Could you please do some research before replying to a comment from me - my memory when it comes to obscure tax when it comes to pay is very good for “reasons” connected to something I’ve been working on for years
Edit - I don’t usually call someone out but this is the second time you’ve posted comments saying something I’ve posted isn’t right and I’ve gone back to the source to discover I’m right and your memory was mistaken
One exception was getting rid of the nonsensical WFP. Well done her. A small and stumbling step in the right direction but welcome for all that. And now she is being bullied into reversing that. I almost feel sorry for her. Almost.
Japan etc fund social care via insurance
That's South West Wales sorted.
Although I understood than when the blast furnaces stopped and cooled that was it. Goodnight Vienna. Perhaps Farage has invented a new technique for restarting blast furnaces along with reopening all the deep coal mines that Harold Wilson closed (thanks for the heads up HYUFD).
It would be levied like NICs, but without the age limitation, only on earned incomes liable to NICs.
Incomes exempt from NICs, like incomes from letting out properties, or pensions (not working while pension age) that attract ICT but not NIC would continue to be exempt from that levy.
Your link doesn't contradict anything I said. In fact it reaffirms what I said.
As has already been said, the hard choices for a government, especially with one with a landslide majority, have to be made in the first year or so and Reeves has failed comprehensively
To those defending her, and indeed Starmer, please explain where 30 billion extra NHS spend, 3.5% defence spend rising to 5%, welfare payments, investment in education, police and justice, is coming from without substantial rises in taxes and borrowing
The NHS and state pension are unaffordable, not least now we have a huge increase in defence to fund, so to all those who resist and reject the proposition, I would suggest the following is inevitable
Means testing the NHS, with the highest earners and the wealthy either taking out insurance or fundng themselves from their assets
End of the triple lock, means test the WFP and pension, with an increase in pension age rising to 70
Social care also means tested, with the wealthy again taking insurance or paying from assets
The fact is earned income is already overtaxed and the high earners and those with assets will have to make much higher contributions towards the overall spending burden on the economy
(Really, it's part of nostalgia for half-remembered good times, isn't it? And it's not going to bring his hair back from grey, anyway.)
As for the rest, healthcare for working people is pretty cheap, because most don't really need any. The people whose healthcare is expensive tend to be out-of-work or very old. And means testing just means that normal people don't have an incentive to save. That was the logic of the 2010 pension reforms in the first place.
Sorry, but we've got habituated to taxes being unsustainability low. And I've voted for those governments, as have you, as have most of us.
Perhaps the worst part of Farage cynicism is enough voters will buy into both the reopening of deep mines and blast furnaces. Neither are practical options.
Farage is either ill informed or a liar.
Not Leon, don't worry.
It should have been left as it was but Reeves is simply pathetic as chancellor
California is the largest sanctuary state in America. The state has ordered every police department and sheriffs office in the state not to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, even if they have committed grievous crimes. Illegals are given free welfare, healthcare and every other conceivable state benefit. They are made immune in every way. Simply put, the government of the State of California aided, abetted and conspired to facilitate the invasion of the United States.
Taxes for working people and businesses are far too high
But the point such as it is is, we need Starmer to deliver enough to satisfy this increasingly skittish electorate otherwise we get the unspeakable horrors of a Reform government.
Instead NI is a tax and the NHS/care is universally available regardless of whether you've ever paid NI or not.
A mediocre writer. A moderate journalist. A right wing lunatic
“As for the future, I may survive the next decade but I’ve no lust to be 90. I don’t know what I’d do, beyond what I’m doing nowadays, which is getting up in the morning, reading the Telegraph and the Mail and having all my prejudices reconfirmed, brewing up a cup of char and then going down the pub for lunch.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/09/frederick-forsyth-dies-age-86/
Politics hey
Which is why most OECD nations fund it via government run national health insurance programmes
https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1932111665123778970
Ilhan Omar’s daughter just posted on Instagram, wishing death to the “colonial empire from LA to Rafah.”
She’s just saying what Ilhan’s too scared to admit: they hate the United States and want to burn it down—and they’re not even hiding it anymore.
It’s not sustainable.
But let's not be like that. RIP. Loved "the day of".
God you so wanted him to succeed after all that incredibly dedicated and cunning prep.
NI is not health insurance, if it were the NHS would be ringfenced only to those who pay for it. Its a tax, no more, no less.
It will stutter soon.
Do your homework.
Politically, this is democracy working as it should. Government does something, gets hideous negative feedback, reverses it.
That feedback may be stupid or ill-informed. In this case, I happen to think it is. (Though there is something a bit pathetic about people who condemned the cut and the reinstatement. Though mostly they are never going to be put down as a maybe on the canvassing list.) But the electorate is always right, even when they are wrong.
Short story is they hired him and Ivana for an advert for the failing stuffed crust pizza after they had launched it ineffectively and paid him $1m (back in the 80s) when his businesses were a mess.
The popularity of the advert launched him into major celebrity and so on.
Whilst it’s a really interesting story it’s telling how the people who made the ad were amazed how good an actor he is, got everything immediately, whip smart. It did make it clear people should never underestimate him.
The podcast was from before the second coming so would love an update on the ad people’s views of him now.
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/brought-to-you-by/id1413374332?i=1000416996351
So when the first dies, the other waits expectantly. And sure enough his friend comes back in ghostly form.
His friend asks ‘Tell, me - is there rugby in heaven?’
The ghost say ‘There’s good and bad news. The rugby is glorious, you are young again and can play forever. All the greats are there too.’
That sounds amazing! What could possibly be the bad news?’
His ghostly friend pauses and then says ‘You’re playing outside centre next Saturday…’
I want to believe you are right, but I just can't see the space for that frank conversation at present.
Rachel Reeves has gone from a fringe to bangs.
Let’s deal with the facts -
“A fringe is often more defined and makes a bold statement, while bangs offer a softer, more versatile look that can be adapted to suit.”
https://x.com/gavinnewsom/status/1932121823925403834
The President of the United States just called for the arrest of a sitting Governor.
This is a day I hoped I would never see in America.
I don’t care if you’re a Democrat or a Republican this is a line we cannot cross as a nation — this is an unmistakable step toward authoritarianism.
An appalling man, indeed, but I'm not sure one can label him as you have
1. Wrote a number 1 bestselling book
2. Has used three names and written bestsellers in each name
3. Most famous book sold probably 2 million copies
4. Translated into at least 30 languages (and been a bestseller in multiple countries, number 1 in Holland etc)
5. Got a $200,000 advance for a porn novel he wrote in a month
As for his journalism, I believe he is one of the two most-read authors on the oldest, most prestigious magazine in the world, and is also an award winning travel writer, now in his 4th decade of travel writing; and travel writing is the most desired form of journalism, which almost every journalist would love to do. So only the very best get to do it
If that is "mediocre" and "moderate" then you set a high bar, but then you're a failed painter, so perhaps some bitterness has crept in
As I said state healthcare should be ringfenced so only those who pay into it via national health insurance get it like most OECD nations do with tax only topping it up for the poorest who could not otherwise afford healthcare